


20 dollar nose bleed

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Basically, Gavin Reed Whump, Gen, Hurt Gavin Reed, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt: bloody nose, also the graphic depictions of violence aren't that graphic i don't think but still, and hank fixes him up, gavin gets beat to shit, i still don't know how to tag im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:09:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23448322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: written for BTHB prompt: bloody nose. gavin gets beat up due to a case he's working and turns up at the precinct in the middle of the night. hank fixes him up.
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Gavin Reed
Comments: 8
Kudos: 155





	20 dollar nose bleed

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! yes my title is just fall out boy...anyway i had a lot of fun writing this so i hope you enjoy!!!! also it's not relevant or mentioned in the story but i would just like to say that i have never and will never write gavin as cis he is trans and you Cannot Stop Me.

It wasn’t the first time Gavin Reed had been punched in the face, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. It was, however, the first time he’d been punched with brass knuckles. He couldn’t say he enjoyed the sensation. Metal slammed into his jaw, his cheeks, his nose, his shoulders, his stomach...again and again. 

On his part, it wasn’t as though Gavin wasn’t doing anything to try and help his case. He was. If cursing out his tormentors and spitting blood at them counted. There were simply too  _ many  _ of them to try and fight his way out-they boxed him in on either side of the alley, occasionally throwing punches if he got too close, pushing him back into the center of action, which involved him getting bounced like a ping-pong ball between two men of questionable sobriety and even more questionable motive. They were the lead suspects of a case Gavin had been working involving a rather grisly murder and a large quantity of Red Ice. And they had just proven their guilt, or something close to it anyway,  _ involvement _ , so all Gavin had to do was live through this beatdown and escape, and he’d have these two motherfuckers, and maybe even some of their crew, in prison for a long time.

Of course, that  _ did  _ mean he had to escape somehow. But he was a little too focused on getting beat up to think much about that, beyond the fact that it was something he needed to do.

A particularly hard punch to the side of his face brought him out of what little thinking he’d managed to do. He tasted copper, and stars swum in his field of vision for a second as he struggled to clear his head-if he passed out, he was as good as dead. Nobody was going to be out at this hour looking down creepy alleyways for unconscious detectives. Not that he thought these guys had any intention of letting him make it through this alive.

Which brought his mind back to the central matter-escaping. He’d tried to fight them off way back at the beginning of this unfortunate encounter, but, as he’d quickly learned, these dudes knew what they were doing and outnumbered him eight to one. Maybe he could negotiate with them...convince them he had more information than they did, that they’d be arrested within minutes if they killed him…

“Stop!”

They did not stop. Fucking uncooperative criminals. The taller of the pair punched him in the stomach, and he would have crumpled to his knees had the shorter man not grabbed him and hauled him back up, only to punch him again, this time in the throat, which hurt more than any of the other punches he’d received thus far. He flailed blindly away from his attackers, trying to breathe, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t  _ breathe, _ and it hurt,  _ god, _ hurt like few things he’d experienced before, and just for a moment, everything stopped. And suddenly, he knew how he was going to get out of this. 

He once again began to fall to his knees, only to be caught and hauled back up as he had been a second before. A fresh punch to his nose momentarily disrupted his thoughts-he felt hot blood begin to flow down his face as he put his plan to action.

He forced himself to cough harshly, which hurt like hell but was crucial to his plan. Blood spurted out of his mouth in what he hoped was a convincing display of internal injury-a crushed trachea, to be specific. He brought frantic hands to his throat and made choking sounds, breathing in little, jerky wheezes, and fell once more to his knees-this time without being picked back up. 

He looked up at the eight men who now surrounded him with what he hoped were wide, fearful eyes, and struggled to speak (which he didn’t need to fake-that punch to the throat, while non-lethal,  _ had  _ come with side effects).

“Can’t...breathe...help….”

There was a bit of nervous muttering among some members of the group. 

“Shut up, we were killing this fucker anyway,” snarled the taller of the men who’d been beating him up-James Donovan, suspected murderer and Red Ice dealer. “Not our problem if he wants to make our job easier. Enjoy your death, motherfucker,” he snarled at Gavin, before delivering a kick to his stomach. 

Gavin slid down into a half-curled position, half out of instinct to protect himself from another kick, half out of performance, because now he had to pretend to die.

He focused on taking shallow, rattling breaths, coughing weakly, while trying simultaneously to slow his heart rate-he was banking on these guys being stupid, but if they checked his ‘corpse’ for a pulse, he was truly as good as dead.

Fortunately, they were just as stupid as he’d hoped-he let out one final rattly breath and then stopped breathing altogether, letting his eyes flutter shut. Scarcely thirty seconds passed before all eight of his would-be murderers (and accomplices to murder) had run away, congratulating themselves on a bad job well done. 

Idiots.

Gavin waited on the ground for several minutes. He was really starting to feel the effects of getting beaten to shit by two dudes a great deal larger than him-his head pounded, blood continued dripping from his nose to the concrete, his stomach throbbed, his throat ached-but he was alive. Now all he had to do was stay conscious long enough to make it to the precinct. He’d be safe there, he could report what had happened to his fellow officers, and if all went well, the dudes would be brought in to the station before they had even stopped to think about the possible consequences of their no-doubt-drunken actions.

He staggered to his feet, bracing himself against the wall for a long minute as he waited for the rushing in his ears to subside and the spots in his vision to fade. He made his way to the street on wobbly legs, and promptly collapsed onto the first bench he saw. 

He wasn’t sure how much blood he’d lost-it couldn’t have been that much, given he was currently only bleeding from his nose and had only been otherwise bleeding from his mouth, but he was lightheaded and dizzy nonetheless, though it didn’t feel like he’d been concussed.  _ Small miracles,  _ he thought, and reached for his pocket to grab his phone.

Which wasn’t there.  _ Shit. _ They’d taken it, he remembered now, before they’d even started beating on him. He reached into his other pocket for the confirmation of what he already knew-his wallet was gone too. 

Great.

He took a deep breath (as deep as he could manage, anyway), then stood up slowly. He knew where he was, which was something, at least. Four blocks from his apartment, just across the street from that gym he’d gone to once last year. He mentally oriented himself and realized that, if he cut through a couple side streets, he could be at the precinct in fifteen minutes. 

So he set off, slowly and painfully, left arm curled protectively around his bruised stomach, right hand trying (and failing) to stop his nose from bleeding. 

Twenty-five minutes later (he’d overestimated his skill at walking whilst beat to shit), he arrived at the familiar building of his workplace. Though it was the middle of the night-around one, he’d guess-the building was lit up, and he could see shadows moving in the windows. He smiled, which hurt.

He wasn’t sure who was on duty tonight, he realized, as he pushed open the door. 

Wait. Fuck. Lieutenant Anderson had been griping the other day about getting stuck with the night shift on Tuesday...was it Tuesday?

“Reed?”

Fuck. Tuesday.

\---

Gavin sat on the counter of the bathroom, feeling like he’d rather be back in that alley. Anderson, after getting over his initial horror at seeing his young colleague arrive to work unprompted, bruised, and bloody at three in the morning, had promptly moved to call for an ambulance, which Gavin had immediately declined. Anderson had, of course, tried to insist on proper, professional medical care, but Gavin, stubborn and angry and completely exhausted, had ultimately won out (it  _ had  _ been  _ his  _ beating, after all, plus he’d just helped to solve a murder, essentially).

So that brought him here, sitting on the cold marble of the bathroom counter, idly swinging his aching legs as Anderson fumbled about in a cabinet for a first-aid kit.

“Why you won’t go to the hospital is beyond me, Reed. Probably got a concussion and you’re gripin’ about havin’ free will.”

“I’m fine,” Gavin insisted, which hurt. He coughed, which also hurt.

“You don’t sound fine.”

Gavin sighed, which, yep, hurt. “Whatever.”

Anderson stepped away from the cabinet with a blue plastic first-aid kit and a paper cup, which he filled in the sink and handed to Gavin, who, ordinarily, might’ve taken the cup and poured it down the drain. He drank the water instead, which did very marginally ease the aching in his throat. He crumpled the cup and tossed it from hand to hand. 

“Hey! Didn’t I tell you to keep pinching your nose? How long’s it been bleeding, anyway?”

Gavin reluctantly did as he was told, leaning his head forward slightly. “I dunno,” he said thickly. “A while.”

Anderson shook his head. “If it doesn’t stop soon, you  _ will  _ go to the hospital.”

Gavin pinched his nose harder. “Will not.”

Anderson opened his mouth to reply, seemingly thought the better of it, and instead got to work unpacking various items from the first-aid kit. 

Gavin wasn’t sure how much good anything Anderson was extracting from the kit was gonna do. There were bandages and alcohol pads, but he wasn’t cut, aspirin, but that would worsen his nosebleed, a splint, but he hadn’t hurt his fingers…

Anderson seemed to realize this, too. Nevertheless, he opened up an alcohol pad and offered it to Gavin, who looked at him with a ‘what-is-this-gonna-do-for-me’ expression on his face. 

“You’ve got dirt and shit all over your face.”

Gavin shrugged, and groaned. God, even his shoulders hurt.

Anderson, apparently sensing that this was going nowhere, took matters (and Gavin’s face) into his own hands, lifting the younger man’s head from its downward, nosebleed-stopping position. He began wiping the grime from Gavin’s face in a far more gentle manner than Gavin had expected, and he was probably about to say something dumb when he coughed again, and then kept coughing, and blood spurted from his lips yet again. He leaned over the sink as more blood dripped from his mouth, and  _ fuck, why was this happening, wasn’t everything else enough? _

Anderson, sensing Gavin’s budding panic, thumped him lightly on the back. “You’re fine, Reed, it’s the blood draining from your nose. Shouldn’t have moved your head.”

Gavin would have pointed out the fact that  _ he  _ hadn’t moved his head, but the taste and feeling of blood on the back of his throat was making him nauseous, so he just put his head back down again and tried to take a deep breath.

Anderson continued wiping off his face, maneuvering around Gavin’s hand to finally remove the blood that had dried from his nose to his chin. 

Anderson had just begun to prod lightly at Gavin’s torso to examine for injuries when Gavin’s nose finally stopped bleeding, and he leaned back against the mirror with a sniff. Anderson looked up at his patient, nodded approvingly, and extracted an instant ice pack from the first-aid kit, which he activated and wrapped in a layer of paper towel. 

Gavin took it with no resistance, lightly pressing the cold material to his now-aching nose. Anderson, meanwhile, resumed his search for further injuries, which took all of a second.

“Ow!”

“What hurts?”

“I dunno. Everything?”

Anderson lifted Gavin’s shirt, whistling lowly at the already-impressive array of bruises that covered his stomach. “Jesus.”

“Mm.”

“Not a lot we can do about that.” Anderson returned once again to the first-aid kit, this time opening a small packet of ibuprofen. “This’ll do something, at least.”

Gavin took them, uncrumpled his paper cup, and filled it with water. He swallowed the two small pills, which might as well have been nails for how much they hurt his throat. He winced and blinked tears from his eyes.

“You get hit in the throat or somethin’?”

A small nod.

“Shit, you sure you’re good? Throat injuries aren’t anything to fuck around with.”

Another nod. “I’m sure. Been hit in the throat before.” He filled his cup again and drank some more water. It didn’t help.

“Hm. With brass knuckles?”

“How’d you know?”

“Those nasty bruises all over your stomach. Surprised your face hasn’t started to bruise yet, too.”

“Hm.”

“You’re lucky your windpipe didn’t get crushed.”

“It did. Sorta.”

Anderson looked at him, alarmed. “What’s that mean, ‘sorta’?”

Gavin shook his head. “Tell you...later. When I give my statement.”

“You’re sure you’re fine? Breathing okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Anderson nodded. “I guess we’re done here, then. Not a lot else I can do for you. Those bruises’ll heal up soon enough, but you’re gonna be pretty colorful for a little while.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll talk to Fowler, he’ll probably give you the next coupla days off, but he’ll want your statement sooner rather than later.”

“I’ll come tomorrow.”

Anderson nodded again. “Good. We’ll move on Donovan and his crew within the week-Chen managed to secure testimony from that squirrely-ass witness we had on the Red Ice deals, and with what happened to you, added to their motivations and means for the murder, adds up to more than enough to put those motherfuckers away for a long time.”

“And all it took was getting beat to shit.”

Anderson laughed a little at that. “Nice work, Reed. I’ll drive you home, it’s almost the end of my shift anyway.”

Gavin nodded without really thinking. A ride home sounded... _ nice,  _ if he was honest. He’d rarely seen this side of the Lieutenant before-gentle, caring, worried...fatherly. If he’d felt more himself, he might’ve said something cruel and cold about fathers and sons, but instead, he smiled. “Sounds good.” He paused a moment. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!! like i said i really enjoyed writing this so i hope you liked it!!!! please feel free to let me know what you think!


End file.
